Friday, June 29, 2012

GE13 battle between racialists and patriots, says Kit Siang

GE13 battle between racialists and patriots, says Kit Siang

June 29, 2012

Malaysian Insider

Lim said the coming election was an opportunity for Malaysians to reject racial compartmentalisation. — File pic

KUALA
LUMPUR, June 29 — Voters must choose between a government that promotes
racial policies and one that espouses democracy, good governance and
equitable economic practices in the coming general election, the DAP’s
Lim Kit Siang has said.

The opposition leader said today that Malaysians of all cultural,
social and economic backgrounds have the power to determine their
country’s future at the ballot box, a day after influential former prime
minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad played up old race-based fears ahead
of the 13th general election (GE13) due within a year.
“The next general election is not a battle between Malays and
non-Malay voters, but between racialists who want to continue to keep
Malaysians in their separate communal compartments and Malaysian
nationalists and patriots who want good governance, economic justice,
democracy, human rights and national unity and not race to become the
dominant election issues,” Lim said in a statement.

“Malaysians have the chance to show that they have become more
Malaysian-minded and patriotic than the Umno and Barisan Nasional
leaders and will respond and rally to Pakatan Rakyat’s call to vote as
Malaysians than just as Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans or Ibans,” he
added.

The Ipoh-Timor MP was responding to Dr Mahathir’s remarks yesterday,
in which the fourth PM said the next election was all about race, adding
that Chinese voters would be the “kingmakers” despite being in the
minority because the Malay vote would be split three-ways among Umno,
the BN’s lynchpin party, and opposition parties PKR and PAS.

The country’s longest-serving PM of 22 years had told a business
forum yesterday that the ruling coalition was forced to cater to various
racial demands because it had grown weak after he left office and lost
its customary two-thirds majority in Parliament.

“In this country, we are very racist, even more than before. The next
election is going to be about race. Who gives what, who gets what based
on race. When the government is weak, it caters to demands which are
not going to be good for the country in the long run,” said the prime
minister who resigned in 2003.

Lim called on Malaysian voters to prove Dr Mahathir and Umno strategists wrong.

“This is what (Dr) Mahathir and the Umno leaders and strategists want
the next general election to be about so that they could play the race
and fear cards to effect,” said the federal lawmaker who had bumped
heads numerous times in Parliament against the 86-year-old Umno man.

An Umno lawmaker had suggested this week that Bersih leader Datuk
Ambiga Sreenevasan be hanged for “treason” against the King for pushing
the federal government to clean up the existing voter roll of dubious
entries before calling for elections.

His statement in Parliament was greeted with cheers from other BN
backbenchers, prompting the DAP to hit out at them for perpetuating
racial hatred.

Opposition politicians and several prominent business and human
rights personalities have criticised the BN — in which its top three
senior parties are split according to race — and, more specifically,
Umno of taking a racial approach in resolving the country’s social and
economic problems.

They raised as example the strong resistance by right-wing elements
within the establishment to the dismantling of a decades-old affirmative
action policy giving Malays a handicap over other races in areas
covering economy and even education, leading to a massive brain drain
out of Malaysia.

Lim said the reality was that the Chinese, who make up some 30 per
cent of the population, were not “kingmakers” and did not want to be
labelled as such.

“The real kingmakers in the 13th general election are not the Chinese
voters but all Malaysian voters,
whether Malays, Chinese, Indians,
Kadazans or Ibans to unite and bring about peaceful transition of
federal power for the first time in the 54-year history of the nation to
end corruption, cronyism and abuses of power,” Lim said.